Mary Introduces Her New CEO

MARY KATRANTZOU has announced the hire of its new CEO, Trino Verkade. Working alongside founder and designer Katrantzou, Verkade - who joins the brand from Thom Browne where she was executive vice president - hopes to secure long-term and, most importantly, maintainable growth.

"It is about getting better before we go bigger," Verkade told the Business of Fashion, adding that it was Katrantzou's "fearlessness" that attracted her to the brand. "Right now, it is about looking at everything we can do to be a better partner with our stores, to give something better to our customers, building the same amazing relationships we have with our retailers with the mills and suppliers."

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Bringing Verkade on board - which was in part made possible by the funding received from the Vogue Fashion Fund this year - will allow the brand to make the most of what it has got and address what is missing, according to Katrantzou. The designer also revealed that, while she turned over $15 million last year, she is intent on waiting until she has "a fully fledged range", including additional categories to ready-to-wear, before she opens her first standalone shop.

Mary Katrantzou Spring/Summer 2016 Ready-To-Wear

Spring/Summer 2016

"A huge reason why I wanted Trino by my side is that she is incredible at looking at product, merchandising and scaling a business that has had substantial growth, where we are really global with a full wardrobe," said Katrantzou of Verkade who, before working with Thom Browne, worked with Lee McQueen at his namesake label for 18 years.

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"In the past year all of our focus has been on building a senior management group that can take us to the next level. Meaning the product, how we scale the business, our distribution channels, our timing, our production, getting better on every single level. We have the best accounts in the world; we have been lucky enough to build a distribution that I am really proud of, so now it is about allowing them to buy deeper into the brand."